Kill Decision

CHAPTER 11

Kinshasa and Brazzaville were the quintessential Third World cities of the twenty-first century. Large-with a combined population around thirteen million-and growing rapidly, they teemed with young men and guns. As the capitals of neighboring nations, they occupied opposite banks of the Congo River but nonetheless formed a single metropolitan area. They were essentially Africa’s liver-circulating the population of the riverine interior through a pitiless Darwinian filter.

Without an urban plan sprawling shantytowns accreted around the colonial and corporate buildings in the heart of downtown. These shantytowns were some of the most crime-ridden and dangerous places in all of Africa.

The common refrain from the West was that only economic development and modernization could address such problems, but Odin knew that the modern world itself was what made this region of Africa so violent. That was because the Democratic Republic of the Congo contained nearly eighty percent of the world’s supply of coltan-the mineral of the information age. Coltan was the industrial name for columbite-tantalite, a dull black metallic mineral from which the elements niobium and tantalum were extracted. The tantalum from coltan was used to manufacture electronic capacitors, which were needed to make cell phones, DVD players, video game systems, and computers. And at one hundred U.S. dollars per pound on the street, coltan had financed a civil war that since 1998 had killed an estimated five and a half million people. These were World War II-level casualties.

But the information age was selective about its information, and the same industrial world that fueled the conflict barely registered this war’s existence. The U.S. and British only grew interested when the Congolese government attempted to nationalize the coltan mines-at which point the war became an intolerable human crisis. It now simmered in dozens of local embers, ready to flare up the moment the opportunity arose. Alternately stoking and dousing those embers was what would keep local governments disorganized and the cheap coltan flowing.

There were Westerners who looked with concern at the suffering of burgeoning Third World populations, but Odin knew that Mother Nature wasn’t the nurturing type. In fact, she might view the stable populations of the West as a failure-a rebellion against primordial order. Nature wanted only one thing: for creatures to produce viable offspring. After that, you were genetically dead. Nature had no more use for you. Your extended lifespan, your biography, your Hummel figurine collection, were all just taking up space. By some cosmic joke, nearly the entire scope of human experience was at odds with the biological world.

So by Nature’s measure both Kinshasa and Brazzaville were a resounding success. Happiness and contentment weren’t in great supply, but there were lots of young people, eager to lay the groundwork for another generation. The rage here was of a type Odin had seen in all the shantytowns and slums of the world: Young men without prospects were not happy about their situation. In the vast game of Darwinian musical chairs, whenever the music stopped there were large numbers of people without a seat-and some smartass had sold them guns.

This was the root of most conflict in the world-people asserting their will to survive, to flourish, and to procreate. Evil had nothing to do with it. And although he’d worked these hidden conflicts for years, Odin knew that most fighting was just a symptom of another problem: too many people competing for limited resources. And yet fighting wouldn’t resolve this either. Rwanda, for example, was still the most densely populated country in sub-Saharan Africa even after the genocide. No, the best way he knew of to defuse these conflicts was to provide opportunities and education to women. Independence. Once that took, population growth would ebb, and actual plans could be made for the future.

This was not a methodology favored by weapons manufacturers.

Odin stood at the visitors’ railing and studied a glowing constellation of high-definition screens arrayed around the control room. Sprawling shantytowns simmered below the surveillance platforms. A populace unaware that they were the test subjects for a grand experiment.

“Have you ever seen EITS in action, Master Sergeant?”

“I have not, General.”

A uniformed African-American JSOC brigadier general stood in the center of the control room as green-badge contractors in shirtsleeves manned most of the workstations in cubicles around him. The general took a sip from a white al-Qaeda-branded coffee mug. “Welcome to Stuttgart. What you’re looking at is nothing less than the future of low-intensity conflict management.”

“I appreciate you taking time for me, sir.”

“Always happy to assist The Activity.” He looked up at the screens lining the walls. “You might occupy a different command silo, but our systems could be a tremendous help in your group’s line of work.” The general reached out and straightened the visitor’s badge on Odin’s lanyard. It said merely Visitor.

“I’m eager to see what they can do, sir.”

The general took another sip from his al-Qaeda mug.

Odin had seen these mugs many times before in command centers. They were much sought after by the REMF crowd. Al-Qaeda was, after all, mostly a media organization-one with a Web presence that would put Ashton Kutcher to shame. They rolled out their own branded characters and products to jihadists worldwide on a regular basis. They even had professional-looking magazines and journals, along with podcast reality shows, making jihadi documentaries with Western video-editing software. Both sides could claim it as ironic with entirely different emphasis. If even terrorists ran franchise operations, maybe there was some common ground, after all.

Odin glanced up again at the array of high-definition screens and across the rows of control board operators. Dozens of people manning supporting systems. “I was told this is a test bed-a prototype-but it looks operational.”

“In a limited geographical zone, it is. This is a joint public-private SAP. Major private sector partners helped build this operations center to showcase what a truly unified twenty-first-century command looks like. We think this technology has a tremendous future.”

“We, sir?”

“It’s difficult not to take a proprietary interest. My staff and I have contributed time and effort to make sure this system meets real-world operational requirements.”

Odin actually knew quite a bit about the systems integrated into EITS, such as the Gorgon Stare, along with all the other systems that defense contractors were developing: automated 3-D mapping of Third World cities, building by building; as well as ARGUS-IR, the Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Infrared system. They were networked, unmanned suborbital camera-and-narrow-aperture-radar platforms-airborne optics tiling together live, highly detailed imagery of a broad swath of terrain in real time. A persistent unblinking eye creating a digital, three-dimensional model of reality as it happened.

Odin nodded up at the main screen-a broad view of the smoke-shrouded shantytowns of Brazzaville. He’d run ops there numerous times in the past decade. “What are we looking at?”

“You don’t recognize it?”

“After a while all these shit-holes look alike, sir.”

The general raised an eyebrow. “The location isn’t important. It’s what the systems can do that’s important. Compared with a platform like Gorgon Stare, the imagery from a Predator drone is like taking Polaroid pictures through a goddamned straw. We can zoom in on any portion of a vast battle space-each airborne asset has one hundred and sixty-five individually controlled high-resolution cameras. Multiple assets can be networked to programmatically tile together contiguous, high-resolution surveillance of broad swaths of terrain in real time. Synthetic aperture radar allows us to see through both clouds and darkness. This is an all-seeing eye, Master Sergeant, permanently recording all activity below from a height of sixty thousand feet-well above the weapon range of these populations.”

Odin nodded. No doubt the names from Greek mythology encouraged the impression of an unassailable Mount Olympus. “The technology, was it developed in the States or-”

“International partnership, but in full accordance with DOD EAR, ITAR, and OFAC export control requirements. Our international partners are just as eager to see counterterrorism operations succeed under every regional command.”

“And these are live images.”

“Live. Everything you see on the main screen is live, real world. But live imagery is the least of it.” The general moved over to a workstation manned by a uniformed JSOC first lieutenant wearing a headset-a strapping blond kid with clear skin and good posture. “Gartner, replay that truck sequence in sector H-Six we were looking at.”

The lieutenant immediately paused the imagery on his screen and tapped in some coordinates.

The general watched intently but spoke to Odin. “The critical difference of EITS over previous surveillance systems is that this high-resolution video imagery is retained over time in a data cloud, allowing analysts to ‘rewind’ the entire battle space-to see what might have taken place in a given locale over time.”

As Odin watched the nearby monitor, the image zoomed in to a tiny corner in the vast shantytown. People were walking past, but then they stopped in midstride. The video rapidly began to rewind, people and vehicles moving backward, until a faded red Toyota pickup moved into frame. The image then halted and began to play forward again, showing several armed men loading crates onto the truck bed.

Lieutenant Gartner was clearly used to doing demos with the general, because he was already doing what the general was about to ask.

“We can move in for a close-up of faces…”

The screen had already done so.

“… and we can even rotate the view.”

The image was already circling around to the other side of the men-not in a smooth pan, but in fifteen-degree leaps of POV.

Still, it was an impressive technical achievement. Odin remained emotionless. “How far back in time can you go?”

“As far back as we want to allocate storage space. We can even flag certain regions for long-term storage. Trouble spots.”

The image was already zooming out to the large city view. Live again.

“We use algorithms to parse human activity-tracking the pulse and character of a place. Automating what we call ‘pattern of life’ analysis. Compiling a fingerprint, a signature of a city’s normal routine. Airborne persistent video pattern-recognition systems will be big in this surveillance effort-Bayesian algorithmic models…”

The general was still talking as Odin watched a constellation of red glowing dots and squares superimposed on the vast city, like ants.

“This layer represents observable human activity. The dots are people, the squares vehicles. Over time the subsystem differentiates which part of the imagery is static city and which is dynamic human activity. But it goes further. Within that human activity layer, EITS begins to accumulate experience of the patterns of human living that represent a city’s background noise-its norm. What travel patterns are followed each day from location to location-with each dot being tracked representing a trip marker that’s added to the database. The totality of trips weaving a pattern of behavior. How consistent is this pattern? What portion of residents follow a routine, leaving and returning to the same places on a general schedule? Which portion of the population has no regular schedule? That lets us focus on areas of suspicious activity-a common point somewhere in the city where individuals who’d been present at earlier ‘trouble spots’ might later congregate, a place that might be the lair of an insurgent group-the sort of intel that your group would previously have had to obtain through HUMINT-can now be gleaned from observing the totality of human activity. Remembering it over time. Seeing everything. Forgetting nothing.”

Odin watched the companion imagery as Lieutenant Gartner played impressive visual accompaniment to the general’s pitch. Odin appeared deep in thought. “Our PIR usually involves locating a specific individual, and for that cell phone SIGINT suffices. Our knob turners can isolate known voice patterns, trace the-”

“You mean as long as you can run manned listening flights over the target area, and we already do that with unmanned airships that can stay aloft for weeks.” The general nudged Lieutenant Gartner aside and clicked through a few menus to bring up another information layer.

The screen suddenly flipped to an entirely new field of hundreds of thousands of clustered dots, moving through the city.

“Every cell phone’s IMEI and the base transceiver stations that serve them. This system simplifies eavesdropping. Just identify the phone you want”-he zoomed in and clicked on an ID number moving through central Brazzaville-“and you can record the subject’s communications.” The sound of foreign chatter came in over the speakers.

The general relinquished control to Gartner again and turned to face Odin. “Think about the combination of persistent telecom and video surveillance-being able to go back in time to see what happened on a street corner two months ago, before you even realized that someone was a person of interest.” The general gestured to an image of the huge city, clustered with dots. “This system displays the social map of an entire city from the communications and geolocation data of its citizens…”

Lieutenant Gartner heard his cue and started making link-analysis webs visible on screen-dense strands that depicted the social network of the city’s populace.

The general was pacing, gesturing to the screen as he engaged in a rehearsed soliloquy. “A detailed social encyclopedia. Autodetection of suspicious activity…”

Gartner made certain the big screen did exactly that-showing a knot of young Congolese men pouring gasoline onto tires stuffed around another man’s torso, then setting it alight to horrific effect.

“Now we know not only the cell phones of this group but also their faces”-the image zoomed in to a leader in sunglasses and a beret-“their leaders. Their vehicles, their confederates-in short, everything.”

While the general talked, Odin wondered how much money they’d spent on this. In Vietnam it had taken an average of fifty thousand bullets to eliminate one Vietcong soldier. Had we upped the ante here? And what was the false positive rate? How many noninsurgents-people who simply matched a misguided pattern-were flagged by the system and handed over to security services or contractor hit squads for imagined or predicted crimes? Certainly, it was not in the interests of the folks running the system to admit it made mistakes.

Of course, Odin knew a system like EITS was not intended to resolve conflicts. It was intended merely to manage them. To keep violence disorganized, channeled, and isolated long enough to permit uninterrupted resource extraction. Once that was finished, the locals would be left to their own devices again. Rinse and repeat, and you pretty much understood the conflict map of the globe. This system let them know more about the locals than the locals knew about themselves. And it was just the beginning. There was no reason this couldn’t be done everywhere-including America, as Odin well knew. The only question was whether it had already been implemented there, in full or in part.

Odin interrupted the general, midpitch. “I was told there’s an autonomous strike capability to this system, General. Is that not the case?”

The general halted, took another sip of coffee, and nodded. “We both know lethal autonomy is inevitable, Sergeant. However, at the moment, we’re not using armed systems over this AO. This is a surveillance platform only.”

“Autonomous drones are part of the design specification, correct?”

“For surveillance, yes. Unmanned systems are how we coordinate complete coverage of the target area.”

“But weapons could be integrated.”

The general put his coffee mug down and studied Odin. “Kill-decision drones are a thorny issue, Master Sergeant. For the foreseeable future we’re keeping a human in the loop.”

“Is this the only implementation of the EITS system currently in use, General?”

“What are you looking for, Sergeant?”

Odin drummed his fingers on the railing while staring up at the screens. Then he focused his gaze on the general. “We both know the days of manned combat aircraft are numbered. Autonomous drones will be cheaper, more maneuverable, and expendable. And remotely piloted drones will be useless against a sophisticated adversary like China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea-they’ll just jam our link signal. That means we need to integrate autonomous drones into our military units. For patrolling and reacting to incursions.”

The general nodded and grabbed his coffee mug again. “We’re in agreement, then. It’s just a question of how long it will take Washington to realize it.”

They studied each other for a few moments in silence as the clattering of computer keyboards and soft radio chatter sounded around the control room.

The general gestured to the screens. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

Odin pondered the imagery. “I just have one concern, General.”

“And what’s that?”

“America pays for the difficult R and D to design these systems, and once they’re designed, they might get away from us. And then there’s the second- and third-order effects of technology like this. Surveillance drift nets create opposition-opposition from a public that doesn’t want technological domination. They’ll innovate ways to evade it, and it’s quite possible we could wind up causing more conflict than if we’d never built it.”

The general just stared at him.

“Just a thought…”